weathertop | darling it's better down where it's wetter

"Uh huh," Sinclair says, leaning back against the wall, still trying to catch his breath. "Well why don't you...give it a few test runs without me, and...and let me know when you want to try again." He waves a hand vaguely at the trash can and then uses the other hand to rub at the small of his back.

Jesus, he's getting too old for this.

You're never too old to be thrown around telekinetically by a toddler.

Jack picks up the trashcan again, keeps it levitating for a moment, then experiments with tossing it around and catching it again. Usually when he plays with this power it's to throw things harder and faster, a challenge in breaking as many things as possible, so a more controlled form is an interesting change. Not as instantly gratifying or hilariously destructive, but interesting.

For about two minutes.

Then he gets more adventurous and pulls a couple other pieces of debris in. Now that's more like the frantic pace he's used to. He can only control one at a time, but how many can he keep in the air? Three? Five? Seven?

This is completely not the slow repeated practice he's meant to be doing.

Crash! Crash! Clatter!

...Also seven was too many.

He watches on for a while, amused at first when Jack begins his juggling act, but they're wasting time. And he's tired.

He's not even sure what time it is, but he is damn sure that it's time for him to get some rest. He's going to be more useless to Jack as a travel companion than he already is if he's too exhausted to even walk.

Then again, he's not sure how appealing it would be to wake up in a room full of splicers. So he's not really sure how much of a choice he has.

"Hey, kid," he says, raising his voice in hopes of being heard over the din. "If we're not gonna make it back to Olympus soon, we ought to find a place to rest for a while. I don't think I'm good for much more tonight."

You know. Not saying that you're taking forever or anything.

Jack kind of looks at him, lets the rest of the debris crash to the ground, and then delicately lowers the poor trash can.

The look is nonplussed.

"We are resting," he says.

They're not running around or actively in battle. Sinclair's even sitting down!

Sinclair shakes his head.

"I mean sleep, son. We're gonna have to stop at some point."

And today was...eventful. To say the least. Maybe Jack has energy to spare, but between preparing to leave and then crashing and burning and almost drowning and thinking Jack had drowned and then being laid out on the tile floor here... he figures he's accomplished enough for one day.

He looks up at the floors above them, then back at Sinclair, not buying it.

"But we're about to go up."

And then they'll be doing one more thing, and then another thing, and then the next five objectives, and yeah you're starting to understand why Jack had barely slept when Sinclair found him. Besides the splicers.

(If Sinclair's familiar with the combo of caffeine, adrenaline and sheer sleep-deprived insanity, he will be intimately familiar with Jack.)

Fortunately for Sinclair, he's not spent too much time having to rely on caffeine and adrenaline to keep him moving. It was a privilege, but he's starting to think those days are long gone.

He looks up at the balcony above them and sighs.

"If you think you can get us up there, maybe we can find a place to make camp. But I don't know how much more I've got in me today, kid."

Wow. As long as he keeps moving Jack feels like he could go on for hours, but if Sinclair's flagging then there's a conflict of interests here. Jack is struck by a sudden and awful premonition of having to hang around in one place for hours and guard Sinclair and he's a free spirit, man, you can't tie him down.

"...Can we try one more time?"

Still bad at saying no. Still even worse at sitting patiently when he wants to be off doing something.

Sinclair frowns, thinking it over. If he says yes, one more time is probably going to turn into as many more times as it takes before they actually get upstairs. If he says no, they're doomed to staying down here, which, granted, does not seem like the wisest decision.

"Alright, let's give it another go," he says, shrugging.

Jack looks a little bit triumphant.

He shoots up the final EVE needle like candy, since he was kind of burning through it with that little juggling display, and then telekenetically proffers the trashcan again. Gently. And relatively slowly.

See, he can do it, hah.

Well, it definitely looks more promising than it did a few minutes ago. He grabs the trash can again, fidgeting for a second to find a position in which he feels relatively secure, hoping it will actually make a difference. He's not usually bothered by heights, but still somehow freely dangling twenty plus feet above a cold tile floor just doesn't seem like something anyone could just be comfortable with.

He takes a breath and nods at Jack.

As if he's actually ready.

Jack doesn't mention the part where he's really having to concentrate to not just fire the trashcan off like a bullet again. That seems like need-to-know information.

Easing into it this time, he lifts. More or less slow, very focused. He's taking the job more seriously than he did as the Amazing Juggling Ryan, now that there's someone attached to the bin once again.

...There's something wrong, though.

He frowns and pulls harder on the trashcan. But he's having to strain to lift it. While the plasmid should be mitigating the weight of what he's throwing -- shit, he's flung a Bouncer corpse at someone before, this should be cake -- it seems to do its job for the bin and then... throw up its little plasmid hands and give up as soon as it hits Sinclair.

Jack hangs onto his wrist with his free hand for more leverage, and puts his back into it. Sinclair's feet rise a little off the floor and WOW HE IS SO DONE WITH THAT HE CAN FEEL HIS SPINE POPPING they drop straight back down again.

Seriously? He flexes the pain out of his shoulders and makes a face of utter frustration first at his hand, and then at the trashcan. Seriously? Okay fine so he can't pick up living people themselves, but come the fuck on, this is just an obnoxious distinction. Fucking plasmid developers. Fontaine is literally ruining his life even from beyond the grave.

"You're heavy," he tells Sinclair accusingly.

Sinclair looks momentarily surprised before letting go and rising to his feet, laughing. "Maybe you just need a little more exercise, don't strain yourself now."

Still, it's obvious this plan is going nowhere. Unless...

"What kind of ADAM are you carrying around, son? How much've you got?"

He blinks. Huh, that was a random question.

"Maybe... a hundred?" he guesses. Yeah, he had some left over the last time he went shopping, it wasn't quite pocket change but it wasn't enough to get anything good, not with inflation the way it is these days, grumble grumble.

So yeah. A hundred. That's his liberal guesstimate.

Well that's no good.

Sinclair's laughter dies into another sigh.

"We started carrying an upgrade of sorts for your telekinesis plasmid there, might be of some use, but you haven't got enough to buy it. I believe that one's going for 250 right now."

It was a thought, but then again so was the bathysphere. They appear to be striking out tonight.

"Two hundred fifty..."

Sinclair may think they've struck out, but Jack is pretty sure they might've struck gold. Just... give him a minute to... math.

There is a comic interlude of lip-pursing, finger-counting, occasional muttering, and great concentration.

One hundred and thereabouts out of two fifty! Is... one fifty. Then x = 160-ish plus wait he has to start again. What did he start with? Okay, if he can count on one-sixty give or take maybe ten, and he needs... wait, he's gotta go back and do that sum again.

He claps in triumph. Math is hard.

"One little sister!"

It takes Sinclair a moment, but only a moment, before he figures out what Jack means. And it doesn't exactly bother him, at least not beyond the fact that now they're going to have to rip one away from one of their Big Daddies. That sounds like the opposite end of fun.

Still, even after the brutal combat he's seen out of Jack, something about child murder doesn't suit him. "Didn't think you had the heart for that kind of thing, kid," he says, shaking his head.

Wow, nice going, that actually managed to make him a little uneasy. A little unsure. And a little defensive.

He's saved some of them. One or two, early on. But something he's come to learn in this place is that failure to arm yourself properly is suicide. He didn't ask to be here, but he is here, and he isn't asking to die here either.

...Which all becomes a bit less dramatic when you remember the Vita Chambers, but it's still a compelling argument. Death is horrible. Rebirth is always a relief, as if it's so unnatural that some part of even Jack's brain can't rely on it.

And you do what you have to do. Even if it's unpleasant. Folks are sensible, they do what's best for them. All that matters to me is me, and all that matters to you is you. And they're less than people. Just like him.

He was looking pleased with himself, like a kid who's just shown off a neat trick. Now he frowns.

"A heart's just a muscle, mister Sinclair."

And he's a sum of the parts that made him.

And if Sinclair could read Jack's mind, listen to the reasoning he's got, he would kindly keep to himself how much Jack's sounding like his father right about now. That probably wouldn't go over too well.

"You're not wrong about that," he laughs.

Because it doesn't bother him. Not really. The Little Sisters lost their humanity the second Tenenbaum implanted those sea slugs into them. Now they're just walking produce. Vegetables, ripe for picking.

That's all they are. It doesn't really bother him.

What are you talking about, Jack's nothing like his father. You should see his golf swing. Could almost kill a man.

As a distraction from the moment, Jack pulls up a piece of floor tile, starts tossing it back and forth several inches above his hands. The frown's gone light and uncertain. He's not sure whether Sinclair is on his side in this or not.

~~whatever his side is because let's be real they're both compensating for something here~~

"I can kill a Big Daddy in a few minutes," he says presently. His tone isn't boastful. He's just trying to break the silence, maybe get them back onto a course of action.

He's never going to get to sleep at this rate.

"Well what are we waiting for then?" Sinclair says, stretching a bit to shake off the last of the stiffness that came from being tossed onto his back. "Let's go kick a can."

Jack nods with returning enthusiasm*, then lifts his head and listens. There's no whaley wails yet. Not a hint of the ground trembling. But he knows from experience that it won't be long until they run into something.

Okay, hang on, he wants to test his gun now. He pulls it from his belt, kind of pokes around it for a bit -- it's still damp but the bullets seem fine -- and then cocks it and lines up... lines up... liiines uuuup. . .

BLAM!

Jack lets out a "ha!" of triumph as the revolver does its job splendidly, taking out a wall light a whole floor up. Okay, now they can go.

With a jerk of his head, a mute 'follow me', he picks a direction and starts to head out.

*once he realises that this is a metaphor

Sinclair follows Jack accordingly, still a few paces slower thanks to the aggravatingly human rate at which his leg is healing.

They both keep quiet as they walk, listening. Jack's hunting a Big Daddy, but Sinclair is equally as concerned about the splicers that tend to flock to Little Sisters the way Jack is right now. He trusts that Jack is certainly more prepared to take on a Big Daddy than your average splicer would be, but he doesn't trust that Jack can take on a Big Daddy and the splicers that think they're prepared.

Maybe he should have tested his own gun before they took off.

Jack's just casually striding and reloading the pistol with armour-piercing rounds. He knows this shit. He enjoys it, even, strange as that may seem. This is something he's good at. Nice challenge, gets the blood pumping, reliably rewarded when he wins. And he usually wins.

Presently, there's a long, low moan that reverberates through the dripping halls. Clanging. And a child's voice. Jack stops, his head turns towards the sounds.

Then he grins and changes course towards them.

Bingo.

Jack's confidence is reassuring, despite the growing list of risks Sinclair considers. The pair can't be more than a couple rooms away; he can practically smell them from here.

And he's got a couple options. He can A) Wait in another room and chance being happened upon by a splicer or two (or three. Or four, with his luck), or he can B) find a place to hide in the room where Jack assails the Big Daddy and hope it doesn't come after him too.

Choices, choices. As a tie-breaker, he asks.

"What do you want me to do?"

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am i funny yet

not enough blingee

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